


Downward Dog

by Ilye



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (no sex at all in fact), Humor, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Humor, Yoga, hypothetical competitive rimjobs, no fisting, nobody gives a Nat's ass, quite a few swears, super-soldiers aren't good at yoga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:38:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7268566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilye/pseuds/Ilye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"If you reckon it's so easy,” he snipes back at Steve – wriggling at the same time because seriously, why has he stopped moving his hands? – “then why don't you come with me next time, huh? Put your mantra where your mouth is, hotshot?"</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>...or...</p><p>All is fair in war and rimjobs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Downward Dog

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just having fun at this point. None of this is (Civil War) canon compliant, but I'm playing around in my first new fandom for 15 years and enjoying myself. Hope you are too - comments appreciated if so, or you can find me on my (underused) Tumblr account, [here](http://ilye-elf.Tumblr.com).
> 
> Thanks to Dusk for the succinct summary and the cheerleading.

"’Try yoga’, they said. ‘It'll be fun’, they said."

“I'm not sure 'fun' was the word they used,” Steve remarks mildly from the kitchen. Something sizzles in a frying pan. Probably what's left of Barnes’ dignity. “More like 'calming and grounding for your disturbed mind', if I got it right?”

“If 'calming and grounding’ equates to 'goddamned boring’,” Barnes huffs, “then I'd rather be disturbed. I’ve spent decades asleep in cryo tubes more entertaining than that shit. Gonna sue for false advertising.”

Because hey, litigation’s an improvement on murder. Sometimes.

“The best sniper of the 20th  _ and _ 21st centuries? Impatient?” Steve says indulgently. “Yoga’s meant to be good for the soul, Buck.” He shuffles his feet on the carpet as he approaches the back of the sofa, so Barnes won't spook and stab him when he dangles down and presses a kiss to Barnes’ neck. Barnes huffs again, but this time with more pleasure than petulance because Steve's hands have found his shoulders and started to knead the muscle and goddammit, if they don't ache like a bitch.

“I don’t have a soul anymore, remember?” Barnes quips, then groans when Steve’s thumb finds a particularly wicked knot and presses in vindictively. “Mmm, you can do that all over. Christ, I’m sore.”

Barnes’ whine goes ignored when Steve’s hands stop moving. Shit. Steve’s cottoned on. 

"Hold on. Are you sulking because you found it hard? Physically difficult?"

And yeah, he’s nailed it. Yoga wasn't boring. It was fucking  _ torture  _ (and Barnes should know).

Banner said he had the mindset all wrong, going in with his blood all hot like he had a sparring session lined up after a ten mile warm-up run. That just got Barnes’ blood even hotter. The breathing part he got just fine – he still remembers being a sniper, thanks. The problem is that super-soldiers obviously weren't designed to balance on any improbable combination of limbs whilst grounding their cores and emptying their minds and aligning their chakras.

Or something.

Behind him, Steve's laughing, smoothing his hands over the fabric of the too-big T-shirt Barnes stole from Steve's closet and don't even get him started on that bastard-ass thing because when he went into some sadistic inverted position and it fell over his head, he panicked and collapsed into a jellied, hyperventilating heap on his mat.

(Barnes won't admit to anyone but himself that the humiliation was almost worth it because, as he lay there trying to get a fucking grip, not only did he get a great view of Romanoff’s ass, she must have taken pity on him because she  _ totally let him look.) _

"If you reckon it's so easy,” he snipes back at Steve – wriggling at the same time because seriously,  _ why _ has he stopped moving his hands? – “then why don't you come with me next time, huh? Put your mantra where your mouth is, hotshot?" 

He doesn't need to look to hear Steve waggling his eyebrows. "Now there's an idea. Yeah, I'll come with you, and I'll raise the stakes." 

Ooh, a competition. Sneaky little sonovabitch knows Barnes can't resist one of those. Barnes tilts his head backwards, enough to get an upside-down view of Steve's shit-eating grin.

"Last man standing gets a rimjob."

Note to self: Re-think turn of phrase there.

Also: Bring it  _ on _ .

Steve's smile slips into a pout and leaks into his voice.

“Hey, where you going? I'm nearly done with dinner.”

Barnes grabs a chicken breast out of the pan and swallows it whole on his way out of the door.

"Out. Gotta see a man about a downward dog."

~✪~

Which is how Barnes finds himself sitting in Stark’s workshop again, hand panel gaping and wires trailing grotesquely across the bench. Stark’s hand is  _ inside _ Barnes’. Barnes doesn’t even go there.

"So tell me again," Stark's saying, peering into Barnes' hand by way of a head-torch, "what's the deal here? Because all seems A-okay to me."

"Need better positional durability. Temporary joint lock function."

"Whose throat do you plan on locking your fist around, then?" Stark's voice is conversational. So is Barnes’ answer.

"No fisting. Hypothetical competitive rimjobs."

That's the sound of Stark choking on his own tongue. Pleasing. He withdraws himself from the innards of Barnes’ prosthesis like it’s a mains-powered steady-hand game (ha-ha, good one, Barnes).

“I’m not installing a tongue on that thing, Pink Mist,” he says, carefully focusing on a point just to the left of Barnes’ ear. Barnes cocks up one corner of his mouth and licks his lips. He’s an asshole, and proud.

“Fix the damned lock function and you won’t hafta,” he says. “Competition, remember?”

Far be it from Stark to back down from a competition, but he takes a deep breath and honest-to-Stalin  _ crosses himself _ before getting back to work. Barnes has never had a tune-up done in such record time and saunters out of the workshop 8.3 minutes later in good time for the next class.

~✪~

They get competitive somewhere around Warrior One. Barnes is okay with that. His thighs are up to the challenge, squatting a little lower every time Steve gets on a level with him. They keep eye contact, but Barnes has done this before and knows something Steve doesn’t, and when they finally reach the tipping point, he just has to glance meaningfully down at the outline of Steve’s package in those running shorts that are  _ far _ too tight for yoga, and Steve sways, but doesn’t hit the deck.

Barnes is glad Steve’s here, and not just ‘cause he can see Steve’s dick in those shorts. Amazingly, he didn’t suggest this purely to be a competitive little shit, because however grounding yoga’s meant to be, when he gets it right and withdraws into his own consciousness things start to look a little greyer, a little colder, a little uglier, and he has to fuck the asana up sharpish to avoid getting freezer burn again. It’s different with Banner; his Other Guy’s on the outside. He switches, he roars, he switches back again, and if he focuses on the inside then the outside keeps schtum. But Barnes’ Other Guy’s on the inside already, kicking around like a gun locked in a closet and just waiting for someone to pay him enough attention so’s he can kick up a stink.

If Steve weren’t there, making an inverted Vee with his ass and one leg in the air as distraction, Barnes wouldn’t have come back for Round Two. (Romanoff seems a little haughty that it’s not  _ her _ ass Barnes is checking out anymore, but Barnes couldn’t really give the proverbial.)

It’s a lot easier today, now that Stark’s tinkered with the arm. The joints lock whenever Barnes places his weight behind them, so it takes some of the stress out of the tougher poses. He’d assumed it was a function of the pins in his scapula and ribs and spine, because he hadn’t lied to Steve: he  _ was _ fuckin’ sore after last week’s class. But maybe it wasn’t the metal-muscle dynamic that did it, maybe he really did miss the chance to learn about an inventive type of masochism on the Indian subcontinent, because Steve’s looking distinctly uncomfortable and Barnes is noticing a tremor to his hands like he only gets right at the end of a shit-kicker of a fight.

Barnes has got him on the ropes. Now all it takes is a little fighting dirty…

“I like this one,” he mutters, flirting with the limits of super-soldier hearing as they settle into the next pose. “‘S good for the back. Stretches my shoulders. And –” He shifts so his weight is behind his left arm and it locks up, right on cue, “– I can see all the way up your asana in those screwy shorts.”

And  _ that _ is how Barnes came to be in Downward Dog, trembling with laughter because Steve's just faceplanted his mat. The instructor looks over sympathetically.

“Never mind, dear. We use a different type of muscles in yoga from what you’ll be used to with all those weights in the gym. Keep practicing – you’ll be able to keep up with your friends eventually.”

Steve groans and rolls onto his back with his arm flopped over his eyes.

“Last man standing,” he waves unsteadily at Barnes, in a gesture that might be intended as a handshake. “You win.”

“Technically Bruce is still standing, you know,” Romanoff points out from a few mats over.

Steve splutters. Barnes gives in and collapses gracelessly out of position, flesh hand between his teeth to stifle his laughter. He looks over at Romanoff. Her eyes are doing that crinkly thing at the outer edges that means although she looks like she's about to put you in a choke-hold with her thighs, she won't actually do it.

They excuse themselves: Steve because he’s mortified at disrupting the class, and Barnes because he just won a wager and has plans for Steve to make good on it pronto.

“See you next week?” calls the instructor, when Steve’s done apologising and they’re making their way to the exit. Steve’s eyes glint in Barnes’ direction, and behind that all-American smile, he’s warming up his tongue already.

“Oh, you betcha!”


End file.
